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Thursday, September 11, 2014

AND LET'S DITCH THE TERM "ORGANIC" TOO

Last time I posted I was
chasing after the use and abuse of the words artisanal and rustic. I proposed
that we ditch them, at least for awhile, until we can give them meaning and
substance again…

The next word on my hit
list, even more abused and distressing, is of course “organic”. Do we really
want to keep on with this hopeless label? I remember when the first mindful
grocery opened in my hometown of Ottawa, an “organic” shop in the Market area,
selling bulk this and that and vegetables and fruit fresh and dried and frozen,
grown without pesticides or other chemicals. It was entirely new as an idea for
a food shop. I’d been lucky: most of what I’d eaten growing up had come from my
mother’s vegetable garden, or from local farmers, and bore little resemblance
to the offerings in the grocery stores, for sure.

But why is it called
“organic?” I remember asking the woman who owned the store. Well we want to
convey that it’s “naturally grown or naturally produced food” she said. You
know, like the magazine “Organic Gardening”.

Yes, I knew the mag, for my
mother had a subscription. Sometime later she also took out a subscription to
Harrowsmith, then a small Canadian-published magazine.

I don’t think the words “sustainable
agriculture” were in the air at all then. We knew about pesticides because of
Rachel Carson’s work… but still, they weren’t scary to most people. Soon after
the opening of the store I had a chance to work with farmers and people in
small rural communities in the Ottawa area. I met a woman who was very engaged
in local political issues. She and her husband farmed, and she also had a huge vegetable
garden. It’s so great she told me, I have no weeds in my garden. The pesticides
my husband puts on the fields also go into the garden before I transplant my
starts in the spring. It’s so clean and weed-free.

Yikes! I thought, but tried
not to show any appalled reaction to her. I did ask her if she wasn’t concerned
at all about the pesticides, and no, she wasn’t. It’s such a small amount, she
said. And the food is washed and cooked…

There are probably still
many farm gardens which produce huge amounts of food for families thanks to
chemical fertilizers and the application of herbicides to keep weeds down. For sure
people need to be fed.

But it occurs to me that
perhaps we’d have less wasted food if it tasted better and if we paid a little
more for it. Wouldn’t we be more mindful as we shopped? And more mindful about
figuring out how to use leftovers?

So if when you see the word
‘organic” you try substituting the word “sustainable”…see how it feels. Of
course we all have different views about what sustainable means. But it’s less
about “purity” (not achievable and frankly an elitist idea don’t you think?)
and more about process and an acknowledgemnt that we’re all in this together.

We need to figure out food
systems that give us all access to food that tastes good and has nutritional
value, and in a way that enables us to go on farming and feeding humanity. That
means paying more for food, paying attention to food and how it’s grown and
produced, and most of all, that means having respect for the people who do all
the work of directly feeding people every day, all over the world: the farmers,
the people who transport and process agricultural production, and those who
sell it, as well as the cooks who get it onto the table.

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